Democrat Governor Tries Out The Left’s Newest Assault On America’s Founders
With some leftists still clamoring for monuments to America’s founding fathers to be torn down because they happened to be products of their time, it’s no surprise that many in the Democratic Party aren’t big fans of those 18th-century White guys unless they’re recast with Lin-Manuel Miranda as the lead.
But while the slavery angle has been worn thin, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger thinks she has a new way to build animosity toward the individuals who fought to build this nation.
The Daily Caller described her remarks during a recent commencement address as portraying the founders as “misogynists”:
“Every generation gets to decide whether the words on those founding documents are simply ink on parchment or if whether mean something tangible in our country today,” Spanberger said. “And Class of 26, so do you. You get to choose what the words on your diploma mean for you.”
She noted that their diplomas marked their academic success and the difficulties they had surmounted.
“And just like our individual paths in life, the path of our shared American story is not a straight line,” Spanberger continued. “And if our founders were here today, I feel like they would be pretty surprised to see me standing here as the governor of Virginia, and pretty surprised to see some of you sitting here in the audience. But that’s exactly the point, as we are marching forward as individuals, as a commonwealth, as a country. And you, as new graduates of Virginia Tech. We get to follow the compass of where we want to be, who we are, and where we are going.”
Earlier this year, she conveniently cited the same founders when taking an all-too-familiar jab at President Donald Trump:
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s leadership is not what the nation’s founders envisioned.
“You have to ask, who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress.… pic.twitter.com/v9iLwkokxi
— PBS News (@NewsHour) February 25, 2026
Here’s the full text from that post:
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s leadership is not what the nation’s founders envisioned.
“You have to ask, who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress. Somebody must be benefiting. He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends — the scale of the corruption is unprecedented,” Spanberger said in the official Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union address.
“There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital. This is not what our founders envisioned, not by a long shot,” she said.
Spanberger, Virginia’s first woman governor and vocal Trump critic, was elected last November in an off-cycle election dominated by Democratic wins that was seen as a warning sign for Republicans in the upcoming midterms.
A few weeks later, she eagerly used their ideas to make the case for her state … or commonwealth:
Our founders didn’t call Virginia a Commonwealth by accident.
They chose it to signify that our government would serve a common good, a common purpose, and common goals. That principle still guides us today.
— Governor Abigail Spanberger (@GovernorVA) April 17, 2026
Honestly, it’s refreshing to find a Democrat so willing to acknowledge that the founders had some good ideas.
But Spanberger also proves she’s not above selling their legacies up the river when she sees an opportunity to pander.
She got in another recent swipe at the founders with her latest effort to chip away at the Second Amendment, as WAVY reported of the so-called assault weapons ban:
However, the NRA, which has already filed lawsuits to stop the legislation from going into effect, said the legislation violated Virginians’ Second Amendment rights.
“We don’t believe stripping citizens of their law-abiding rights and owning common-use firearms is in any way reasonable,” NRA Director of Public Affairs Justin Davis told 8News.
Plus, Davis said it will actually make Virginians less safe.
“Of course, criminals who do not care about the law and do not care about arbitrary gun control laws are going to continue to illegally purchase these firearms,” said Davis. “We don’t believe in criminals being allowed to outgun law-abiding citizens.”
Here’s a clip of her remarks:
🚨Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger to Virginia Tech graduates: “If our founders were here today, I feel like they would be pretty surprised to see me standing here as the governor of Virginia.”
📹: C-SPAN pic.twitter.com/Gcb0M8cbtv
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) May 15, 2026